TEA PARTY PATRIOTS:
Tea Party first to cheer Cruz bid (quote by Jenny Beth)
“He's a leader of the Tea Party in Washington, so it's not a surprise that Tea Party leaders are heaping praise on Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential announcement today. Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, was the first to embrace Cruz, noting his firm stands on conservative principles. "It's fitting that Sen. Ted Cruz is the first announced candidate in the GOP presidential field," Martin said in a statement. "In his two short years in the Senate, he has yielded to no one in championing the values of personal freedom, economic freedom and a debt-free ...

TEA PARTY PATRIOTS:
On free trade, tea partyers and the left want the same thing
They're both trying to stop the Obama administration from fast tracking a deal -- but they don't coordinate to make it happen.
“…America wins because we do a better job of creating those products, we have better innovation and we have smarter marketers. That’s what we think of when we think of free trade,” says Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government. “We don’t think of, 'you’re allowed to sell another 100,000 chickens into Japan.' That’s just cutting a deal for how much of a market you’re allowed to infiltrate.” Manning ...

TEA PARTY PATRIOTS:
Senate Dems block GOP effort to tie DHS funding to Obama immigration actions
“The Tea Party Patriots group is suggesting that Senate Republicans are backing down because they fear Americans will blame them for a partial DHS shutdown. “Senate Republicans are about to cave in to President Obama,” the group said Monday. “It’s time … to ratchet up the pressure on wobbly Senators.” A federal district court judge in Texas last week temporarily blocked the administration's plans to carry out an executive action that protects millions of illegal immigrants from deportation.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/02/24/t...

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CALENDAR:
The House will return on Tuesday, and then be in session through Friday. The Senate will return on Monday and be in session through Friday.
SENATE FLOOR ACTION LAST WEEK:
Since we last talked two weeks ago, the Senate finished dealing with its amendments to the Keystone XL Pipeline bill and passed it by a vote of 62-36 a week ago Thursday, on Jan. 29.
Last week the Senate tried to take up the House-passed DHS funding bill, H.R. 240, which contains the tough language we wanted that blocks the President’s November executive amnesty AND overturns the ...

TEA PARTY PATRIOTS:
It's Time to Pass the Lee Balanced Budget Amendment (Jenny Beth Martin’s op-ed)
“With the president’s recent lawlessness on executive amnesty and GOP efforts to beat it back, it’s easy to forget that just three and a half years ago, we were on the cusp of a grand bargain. President Barack Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner would tackle a range of ever-present fiscal crises, everyone would make tough concessions, and the nation would be on sound fiscal footing for a generation. Alas, it was not to be. In a rare moment of fortitude, the speaker wouldn’t go along with the massive tax increases the president wanted. ...

TEA PARTY PATRIOTS:
Iowa Freedom Summit brings big names to state (TPP-sponsored event)
http://www.kcci.com/news/iowa-freedom-summit-brings-big-names-to-state/30873014
A mighty conservative summit in Iowa: 23 speakers but no Bush, no Romney (TPP-sponsored event)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/22/inside-the-beltway-a-mighty-conservative-summit-in/
Sherwin-Williams Calls Average Hair Color at Tea Party Gathering 'Balanced Beige' (TPP-sponsored event)
The South Carolina Tea Party Coalition convened in Myrtle Beach over the weekend, and one thing that stuck out was how few young people were in the ...

TEA PARTY PATRIOTS:
Tea Party groups make last-minute push to oust Boehner
“Tea Party groups are making a late push to oust Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). With about two hours to go before the 12:45 p.m. vote on Tuesday, FreedomWorks said that its members had made over 11,000 phone calls to congressional offices urging members to vote against Boehner and sent more than 18,700 messages online in the last 72 hours. Another group, Tea Party Patriots, said on Twitter that it had facilitated close to 4,000 calls to members and urged its followers to make more. FreedomWorks was also aggressively pushing the campaign against Boehner on social media ...

HEALTHCARE:
ObamaCare fines rising in 2015, IRS prepares to collect
“Don't have health insurance? Get ready to pay up. The ObamaCare-mandated fines for not having insurance are rising in 2015 -- and for the first time, will be collected by the Internal Revenue Service. The individual requirement to buy health insurance went into effect earlier this year. But this coming tax season is the first time all taxpayers will have to report to the IRS whether they had health insurance for the prior year. The fines for the 2014 year were relatively modest -- $95 per person or 1 percent of household income (above the threshold for filing taxes), ...